Similar to my previous thread, except these are for the second chapter.

Usage conditions: You may only use these in non-profit projects. "For-Profit" means anything with advertisement, scamstarter, donations, and similar compensation. I do not allow my assets to be used in such work, period.

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As before, Resource (polished) versions will be published on my site whenever I decide to finish them.

moon1

Compared to Blood of Albion, Blood of the Moon was created in a tiny fraction of time. Several conditions were key to this - having the appropriate meshes from my ports on-hand (Tera EX content) and being able to figure out how to use them. The setting was also quickly conjured based on a single idea with much of its content improvised as I created the maps.

The setting is a tower inside the canyon. I simply hoped the players didn't try to turn back into the flesh-shredding sandstorm because I didn't want to make exterior maps.

Due to asset limitations and lacking the desire to rip other games like Blade and Soul or Bless at the time (their internal naming conventions are not nearly as easy to organize) I decided the tower would have a fusion of two types of architecture and justified via writing mechanisms afterwards.

An extreme lack of mechanical doodads and machinery in general greatly inhibited my design for the tower, but I dealt with it using some temple-like objects and obscuring them in darkness elsewhere and called them machinery. Between video work and other content I only allowed myself to allocate a certain amount of time to each map -- less than a day manhours a piece start to finish. The baking times were also extremely prohibitive and I was forced to used very low lightmap resolutions for most of the objects. Since the maps comprised of large prebuilt pieces with suboptimal UVW for lightmaps they needed 4k+ to really give the shadowing good details. Only one map has 4k shadowmaps for one or two objects. Were I running on hardware newer than 2009, or were I able to get swarm coordinator to function over the internet, I may have been able to squeeze a massive amount more quality out of these renders.

Small lighting adjustments. The torches and their brightness are a concern; I tried to attain a balance between realism and properly defining what is movable space and what isn't.

Detailing was very tough due to the limited assets that fit the style of the large platforms.

This is a rare map in which the two exits connect to the same general area in the next map. It's relevant mostly on how certain encounters may be engaged.

Increased shadow map resolution for some parts and updated the rocks per the recommendation of a drunk Swedish man. Notice how the shadowing defines the upper objects far better and gives more depth to the image from the previous one.

In the Resource version I'd like to bake the entire scene with higher res shadows and maybe adjust the background a bit.

moon2

In the second map, the party is faced with a forking passage but one is blocked by an energy barrier, generally forcing them to go lower to the swamp (though it's not absolutely necessary depending on what they do). The blue glowing pedestal is linked to a power system. Again, only one small encounter was on this map, but that could change greatly depending on events in the game.

Since I didn't produce many WIP images for most of the maps at this stage, the map is already complete in this image.

A render with shadows baked on some objects that weren't baked prior.

In the Resource version, I would probably adjust the background and raise shadow resolution overall. I may also block or delete out inaccessible areas to make them black so the GM can see hidden tokens in those areas a bit more easily.

moon3

Once I had the tower grounded I knew it would be pretty easy to make. The swamp, however, was going to be tough. I went into this map intending to trigger Mucky with flashbacks of trials of pain in From Software titles he has played, even though he was only spectating. That was my only design goal at first. It's a ruined swamp, and how good it was going to look was going to be heavily capped by Orthographic camera limitations in Unreal 4.

My initial blockout of the idea seems promising. I intended to place sparse vegetation and trees. I wanted the swamp to be very dark and only illuminated in specific passages. Turns out that shitty monitors can't handle this map that well at all and I never even considered that. Oh well.

Originally, Xiao's platform was going to be an entire superstructure, but I couldn't find any meshes that made it work. So, he fights the party in a shattered organic area filled with eggs instead.

I deleted all the trees. They didn't light bake correctly and ortho made them incomprehensible in depth.

Adjusted shadow resolution. This map slayed my computer. The resolution is half of what it should be, but I can't bake it. 12gb of ram just isn't enough for these kinds of meshes.

The Resource version would see the brightness increased a bit and the shadow resolution increased. I'd also probably place more vines.

moon4

Much like moon2, there's no WIP shots for this one. It was blocked out in less than an hour.

The most neglected map of the game design-wise. I wanted to create a ballroom and fill it with Starborn Oni. Sadly, I couldn't create a ballroom, and I got distracted too much by IRL interruptions at this point to give the design the attention it needed.

moon5

A similar story to moon4. However, unlike moon4, the map design was partially in how it was built and the rest came to me after the map was started on.

This room is a recreation of Heigan's Safety Dance in some vein. A cross of fire channeled by an elemental spins in the lower chamber while Oni with trip, disarming, sentinel and other control abilities spawn on two platforms and others guard the upper level. Invisible Assassins guard a Prefect whom has powerful support abilities and Truevision. It's a fight whose dynamics change greatly on what the party does. Despite being slapped together faster than any other room in the game it was the most liked.

The resource version would see few changes, mostly shadow quality and a bit more detailing.

moon6,7,8,9

Maps for the final boss fight. I'll just list them all. Two are versions of Albion maps, and one is a psychosis version of the first - the tower summit. The summit received very little detail due to both asset limitations and desire to keep the huge arena clean. Despite this I missed removing some objects between transitions and felt like a retard.

The primary summit map is very simple and clean cut. It has three major points of interest - the primary tower inhibitor, Zobec's throne, and the primary command console. Despite its simplicity, the insane baking lights really crippled this map's ability to grow.

The resource version would probably see a few light variants crop up for the moon's approach as I had originally wanted but didn't have the patience to render.

The psychosis version of the map was made in less than an hour. Again, the light baking was ludicrous and I couldn't fix the shadows on the fog planes without spending another 4 hours waiting for my computer to function again. The orthographic camera heavily impacted this map - all of the panels are angled and jumbled up and you can't hardly tell. It was supposed to be riddled in difficult terrain but the ortho angles didn't make it apparent, so ingame I ruled no difficult terrain at all. I was very disappointed in this map and my ability to make it appear as I had desired.

The resource version would see huge changes across the board.

The first psychosis battle of Samysya. The party fights Valysya's lion. These small fights were intended to introduce the fight mechanics. At 200hp, the lion was brought to its transition conditions before it could do anything at all. This map was actually the last map made for the project and was slapped together in about 10 minutes. The bake took about 5 minutes but froze my computer for close to an hour.

The Resource version would probably see some fog added. Fog doesn't play nice with the water on ortho, so it'd probably be a rather dramatic change to make it happen.

The UE4 version of this map would see the water pulsating with a white glow. This wasn't possible in ortho due to the lack of emissive support.

Psychosis version of the throne where the party is introduced to Sam's lion form. Again, the fight was less than half the length expected despite the party having no resources left. The lion did leave the fight with 3 stacks of Supercharge, though, which contributed in the main battle.

This map received more attention than the other summit maps due to the manipulation of the original monument map from Albion necessary. The lighting was impossible to get right for Orthographic. The lava uses emissive lighting but it seems to light things that should be past walls and blocked from light emission, so that's a pretty severe limitation. I was able to sweep it under the rug by angling the lava. It isn't apparent in the ortho render, but in the map it's angular to push obvious lighting bugs away from the camera.